America at a Crossroad

The United States of America has long been the shining city on the hill, beckoning to the rest of the world. From our very beginning, we were a country focused on individual liberty and the promise of opportunity. The American dream is not uniquely American. The desire to live a prosperous life is written in the human heart. Our founders understood this and enshrined it into our founding documents, recognizing the right of a free people to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. This is what has made the United States the greatest nation in world history.

But we are not without fault. The United States has not always acted in moral and just ways. We have made mistakes. We have stumbled along the way. We have proven that we are capable of great atrocity when we don’t live up to our principles. In that way, we are no different from any other nation that has occupied this fallen world. King David was a man who also committed great atrocities, yet he was favored by God. This was because that when David realized what he had done wrong he truly repented of his actions and begged God for forgiveness. We all can learn a lesson from King David.

The United States once again finds itself at a crossroad. Will we choose to take the moral and just path forward or will we stumble and fall once again?

It is estimated that we had twelve million people who entered this country illegally prior to the Biden administration. With the open-border policy, encouragement, and support, that number is estimated to have doubled over the last four years. For sake of the discussion, we will use the round number of twenty million.

Illegal immigration was the primary concern for many people during the last election. It was one of the driving factors that got President Trump elected. He was sworn into office and immediately went to work to make good on his promise to solve the problems at our southern border. Initially, ICE was to target the hard-core criminals. Remove those who only bring harm and hardship to others.

The problem is that President Trump made a commitment to deport one million people a year. That gave ICE the unwritten quota to deport over 80,000 people a month. Failure is never an option with President Trump and this puts a great burden on the people at ICE to meet the demand or receive the wrath. There are a lot of big fish in the ocean, but you can’t catch them at 80,000 a month. In order for ICE to make good on our commander in chief’s promise, they have to cast the nets wider and deeper and go after the fish wherever they can be found.

That is the crossroad at which we now find ourselves. How do we deal with the twenty million people already here who came into this country illegally? Will we do the moral and just thing or will we commit another atrocity for which we will hang our head in shame decades down the road? Every nation has the right to enforce their immigration laws. Every nation has the duty to protect their people from those outside of their borders. There is no question that America is justified in fulfilling those duties. How we go about it will be what determines how the rest of the world will view us. Are we still that shining city on the hill or have we lost our luster?

Illegal immigration has long been a problem for the United States. President Reagan reluctantly signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 into law. It gave amnesty to 2.7 million people, giving them permanent residence in the United States. Reagan did so because it came with the congressional promise to get illegal border crossings under control and stem the steady trickle of people into this country. That was a promise that was never kept.

Illegal immigrants have always been pawns on the political chess board. They are always a big talking point in political debates and every candidate since President Reagan has spoken out about the need to stem the problem. None before President Trump made an honest effort to do so. During the Biden administration we saw an orchestrated effort to get as many people across the border as possible for purely political and nefarious reasons. We now are faced with what to do with twenty million people, the majority of who only wanted an opportunity at a better life for themselves and their families, an opportunity those of us privileged enough to be born here take for granted.

There are some who believe that if you take away everything they have, their jobs, their homes, their medical care, and food, that they will happily pack up and go back to where they came. What these people do not understand is that they had much less in the place they came from and that is precisely why they came here to begin with. Where would you rather be homeless and unemployed, America or any of the third-world nations? At least here they still have some protection of the law and the generosity of Americans to care for them. By taking away all that they have, we do nothing more than force them into lives of crime to survive.

Some believe that we should just deport everyone who is here illegally. This is an impossible task. We have neither the resources or the money to accomplish such a goal. This would be seen by the world as something akin to the Jews being loaded onto train cars during the holocaust, and rightly so. It would create wide-spread panic. It would separate parents from their children. It would break up families. It would be total chaos. We can see this already happening with some of the actions of ICE in the past months. Even President Trump realizes that it is impossible to deport everyone and that is why he only committed to deport four million people over the next four years. As with most things with President Trump, this is a grandiose idea and one I can’t see as achievable.

A better option would be to create a new Immigration and Control Reform Act that protects the good people who are here from deportation, while giving them a path forward to correct their situation in life. This cannot simply be a blanket amnesty program or it would be greatly unjust to those who have spent their precious time and money to try to enter the country through legal means. I would think that it would come with a lengthy probationary period that required community service hours and a hefty fine. They would be punished for their crime of entering the country illegally while at the same time being given a way to rectify their status. Those who choose not to participate in the program should be deported.

The original Immigration and Control Act largely failed because the people it was designed to help did not trust the government not to double-cross them. They saw it as a means to find them so they could be deported. Many chose to live life in the shadows rather than risk being deported when they sought to rectify their situation. No one could blame them. Our government has been anything but trustworthy. We would face a similar problem today with any type of path to citizenship. What stops the next administration from reversing it and going after those who were brave enough to sign up?

Mercy is measured out in the same measure it is given. The United States has been greatly blessed in most every way. Our constitutional guaranties beckon to anyone seeking a better life for themselves and their families. What we have been given by God is meant to be shared and not hoarded. If we refuse to share from our abundance, God may chose not to share from his. God bless the Unites States is an acknowledgement of what he has done and not guaranty of what is to come.

God will judge the nations on their generosity to those in need. Will we find ourselves on his right or on his left? Let us walk both the moral and just path.